At last, Saudi women can take the wheel
Hard to believe it, but social change is finally coming to Saudi Arabia, said Monika Bolliger in Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich). By next June, women will be allowed to drive. The decades-long ban on them doing so was part of the regime’s deal with the fundamentalist clergy, who believe that giving women freedom to drive leads to sexual promiscuity, degrades the family and may even “harm women’s ovaries”. That the regime is now breaking that deal is due in part to its desire to mend its terrible international reputation (it’s being excoriated for war crimes in Yemen; its blockade of Qatar; its failure to stem the export of Wahhabi religious extremism), and in part to economic necessity. Since the oil price collapse, women are having to work to support their families, and employing a driver can cost a third of their salary.
It’s also due to the arrival of a young ruler, said Martin Gehlen in Frankfurter Rundschau. King Salman (who has early-stage dementia) caused a stir earlier this year by appointing a new heir, his 32-year-old son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who is now de facto ruler. And, hoping to secure the support of younger Saudis – more than half the population is under 25 – the prince is making a number of modernising gestures. This month, for example, he gave more than 60,000 football fans free tickets to watch the World Cup qualifier against Japan. But clearly he has no plans to allow freedom of expression. On the contrary, in recent weeks he has cracked down hard on both conservative and liberal critics, and has initiated a “spectacular” wave of arrests of preachers, journalists, activists and academics.
Most of the changes affecting women have in any case been small and symbolic, said Lulwa Shalhoub in Arabian Business (Dubai) – being allowed for the first time to join in national holiday celebrations in a stadium in Riyadh, for example. The main basis of female subordination is the rule of male guardianship, which in all significant issues forces them to submit to the whim of their father or husband, even younger brother or son. That rule has been tinkered with but largely left in place. However, misogyny is still ingrained in the culture, said Al Bawaba (Amman): the cleric who recently claimed on social media that women have only “half the brain” of a man was saying what many think. And Saudi women are often just as conservative: many have tweeted their outrage at the lifting of the driving ban, lamenting the “end of peace and security” and predicting “unbridled partying”. Men who welcome it, they say, lack “manliness” and “chivalry”. Stamping out misogyny will take more than a change in the law.